Wait gets longer for murder trials

Sunday

Jul 27, 2014 at 3:00 AM

By Emily WeaverTimes-News Staff Writer

In Superior Courts throughout Judicial District 29B, where felony cases of breaking-and-entering and child abuse are on the rise, murder must wait its turn.The wait has been long for families connected to the murder case of Eric Cornell Wilson, accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, Victoria Jon Baptiste, in January 2011. For three-and-a-half years, Wilson has waited in a private cell at the Henderson County Detention Center, poring over his case file and law books to prepare for his own defense.It will be two more months before his case comes to trial.The wait has been a nightmare for the family of Jon Baptiste, but delays are not uncommon on the bumpy road to justice.A decade ago, murder cases could be resolved in about a year in District 29B, which covers Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties. Now, it takes an average of at least two and sometimes three years to bring one of the world's oldest crimes to judgment in Henderson County and elsewhere in North Carolina.Delays have popped up in tribunals across the state, pushing the median age of a murder case at resolution (either by dismissal, plea or verdict) to a four-year high of 761 days — or a wait of more than two years — in statistics compiled through June 30 by the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts.In Henderson County, the median age of a first-degree murder case was 1,226 days in 2013, or more than three years, compared to the state's median age of 752 days for the charge.Cases in Brunswick County took even longer, according to court records. Closest in population to Henderson among North Carolina counties, Brunswick County murder cases languished for a median of 1,350 days before finding closure in 2013.Why?Legal advocates point to a backlog in the state's crime lab, an overwhelming caseload for forensic examiners who are now required to appear in court with their findings, a deficit of skilled defense attorneys, scheduling conflicts and limited court sessions in a court system starved for funding.Local District Attorney Greg Newman also points to a breakdown in family units and a laissez-faire attitude toward drugs that he sees ensnaring more victims and fueling more crimes.The list of catalysts — much like the wait — is long. Changes are on the horizon that may help, but for some families, help won't come fast enough. Seven murder cases are pending now in District 29B, and at least two of them have lumbered past the three-year mark.Some don't survive the wait — like David Wayne Hogsed, 45, who died 10 months after being charged with murder in the 2007 death of his daughter's boyfriend, Joshua Austin Raines, in Lake Toxaway. Buford Snoddy committed suicide on the eve of a preliminary hearing in the death of his cousin, Katherine Hedrick, one year and three months after his 2007 arrest in Henderson County.A potential key witness in the murder case of Jermaine Deprie Glover died in the three-and-a-half years it took to bring Glover's case to trial. The witness had told police that he saw Glover at home during the time when another witness' testimony put Glover on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where Glover's roommate was found dead.The deceased witness' statement was never read into the record in Glover's second trial in May 2013 , which ended in his conviction of first-degree murder. Glover appealed his conviction, claiming the court erred in its denial of his murder charge being dismissed for lack of evidence. The appellate court turned down his appeal in March.For others, the tick of the clock can be deafening, leading to sleepless nights and heartbreaking days. The wait was excruciating, at times, for the family of Vanessa Mintz, who was shot to death at Saluda Mountain Lodge on Feb. 19, 2011. Three years and three postponements later, the family held a vigil calling for prayers that a trial date of May 19 for the man who killed her would come without any more delays. They prayed that other families seeking justice would find relief in the beleaguered system.“It hasn't been three years” for us, Mintz's father, Dr. Carl Mintz, said at the vigil. “As a matter of fact, it's been 1,095 days that were mixed with lonely nights in between each one. When you talk about 1,095 days, you've also got 1,095 nights. Some where you can't sleep, and in some which you do.”

Still pending“Where is the justice?” asked Jon Baptiste's mother, Lorna Jon Baptiste, on July 10. A week earlier, she learned that the man accused of killing her daughter won't be called for trial until Sept. 22. If the trial proceeds, it will take three years and eight months to resolve the case.“It's been three years of waiting for justice,” said Lucrecia Wilkinson, Victoria Jon Baptiste's aunt, in an email from Saint Lucia, where her niece once lived. “(I) can't help but think that her case is looked at as just another black woman who is not relevant to the society. ... Victoria was a victim of domestic violence and her children were child witnesses to that behavior.”Police say Victoria Jon Baptiste was bound and gagged, sexually assaulted and strangled in her bedroom while her four children played at her Park Street home on Jan. 12, 2011. She was 27 years old. The family said she tried to break free from Wilson through a restraining order in November 2010.Lorna Jon Baptiste didn't just lose a daughter. She also lost three of her grandchildren. Victoria Jon Baptiste's four children were separated after her death and sent to live with other families.Lorna Jon Baptiste is raising her daughter's oldest son. The youngest child is being raised by Wilson's family, she said. Lorna Jon Baptiste still doesn't know the whereabouts of two of them.“Every morning, I look up and I ask God to bless them wherever they are,” she said.She brought Christmas presents for each of them to court with her in January, when the trial was previously set to start, hoping to give them to other families who have had contact. Then the case was delayed, and with each new court date comes as a painful reminder.Wilson, who has claimed he was framed, has added to the long wait by dismissing four attorneys, and he now plans to represent himself.Lorna Jon Baptiste isn't sure if the trial will proceed as planned in September, but she knows that no resolution in the court will bring her daughter back.“Every time I have to pass the cemetery,” she said, “it turns my whole life around ... I don't think it will ever heal.”The wait is “hardest on the victim's families,” said District Attorney Greg Newman. “As time goes on, you know, they try to resume some sort of normalcy in their lives. ... They're back into their routine. They're trying to cope with the loss of their loved one, and then all of a sudden the case is back on the docket for some reason or the case comes up and maybe four months have passed or six months or even longer, and they have to relive and experience all of those emotions again. ... It's difficult on them.”“We realize that and we try to keep that in mind,” Newman added. “We try to bring these cases to a resolution as soon as we can so that they have some closure and so that they can move on.”But sometimes everyone is forced to wait.

Hurry up and waitTwo-and-a-half years after his arrest, Otha Ray Barefoot's case finally came to trial this month. Barefoot, 29, admitted shooting Paul Allen Bradish at Smiley's Flea Market on Feb. 26, 2012, but claimed it was self-defense. He was convicted of first-degree murder on July 17.Newman says his staff hopes to bring two more murder cases to closure in Henderson County before the end of the year. During a two-week term in September, after Wilson is called to trial, prosecutors are looking at calling the case of Daniel Clay Moore, charged Oct. 11, 2012 with the beating death of Walter Cleveland Davis.The case of Michael Wilkie, charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Shelby Wilkie, on Jan. 5, 2012, has been earmarked for trial in January.“One thing that prevents us from going forward real fast is” waiting for evidence to be returned from the crime lab, Newman said.The District Attorney's Office received all of the evidence submitted to the state's crime lab in Moore's case near the end of June — about one year and nine months after Davis was killed.Nearly one year and seven months passed before evidence came back from the lab in the Wilkie murder case. Two years and two months went by before Newman's office received all of the evidence and test results in the still-pending murder case of Brandon Cody-Lee Case, accused of the February, 2012 shooting death of Joshua Lindsay in Saluda. More evidence was submitted to the lab under a rush order on July 7, according to Noelle Talley, public information officer for the N.C. Department of Justice.Barefoot's evidence was analyzed and returned in seven months. The analysis of the evidence against Wilson was completed in two months.Any evidence that requires the involvement of the state's overstressed crime lab demands a wait. “We're not the only district with these kinds of cases, of course, so we have to wait our turn, and that's just the reality of it right now,” Newman said.

Caseload up, funding downThe cases never seem to end for forensic examiners in the state's crime lab, feverishly trying to dig out from a backlog that continues to build. DNA submissions have skyrocketed 64 percent since 2007, but only one lab in the state is equipped to handle the testing, Joe John Sr., former director of the N.C. State Crime Laboratory, said in a 2013 report.The caseload is up, but funding and positions to manage the workload are down, since the lab took a hit of $300,000 and five employees in the state's 2011 budget.Adding to what leaders have called the “perfect storm,” a 2009 ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court ordered forensic analysts to testify in person in every case, rather than by affidavit. The requirement multiplied the court time for toxicologists by 400 percent in a single year, and forced DNA analysts to devote more than 800 hours of time they might have spent in labs to courts across the state's 100 counties, according to John.The crush of work forced advocates to lobby for another lab and more employees in the state legislature last year. State Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, came to their aid, offering the campus of the Western N.C. Justice Academy in Edneyville as a new home site for the advanced lab. Last year, he secured $1.44 million in the state's budget to finish planning the 36,050-square-foot facility and funding for 19 new toxicology analysts and the equipment to put them to work.The Senate's current proposed budget earmarks $15.4 million for the construction of the new lab.“I'm thrilled to be able to get the financing for this facility,” Apodaca said in May, adding that the funding in the Senate's proposed budget will come from “bond availability. We have room available now, since we've paid down so much debt.”Budget talks resume in the state capital on Monday.Since fiscal year 2007-08, the state Department of Justice has requested a total of $16,566,618 and 87 new positions from the General Assembly's budgets, according to DOJ statistics. Of those requests, $4,572,834 and 33 positions have been granted.

Threat to justice?“The court system has been starved of funding for a long time,” said Paul Welch, who heads the public defender office of District 29B in Transylvania County.A study published in the summer 2003 issue of the N.C. State Bar Journal by John Medlin and Rhoda B. Billings warned that under-funding was feeding a backlog of cases in the courts that threatened justice.“One negative effect of this under-funding is an unacceptable increase in the workloads of judges and other judicial officials,” according to the study. “Increases in the numbers of judges, magistrates, clerks and prosecutors, though significant, simply have not kept up with case filings. As a result, since the 1983-84 fiscal year, the caseload per district court judge has increased 40 percent, the caseload per magistrate has increased 36 percent, the caseload per prosecutor has increased 36 percent, the caseload per clerk has increased 29 percent, and the caseload per superior court judge has increased 17 percent.”The state's felony caseload has been on an upward trend since those figures were reported in 2003. Newman called out the calendar for the latest two-week session of Henderson County Superior Court on July 14; 341 cases filled the docket. The courtroom was taxed to standing room only. Barefoot's trial started first and took four days to conclude.From the western mountains to the eastern seashore of the Old North State, 1,096 cases with murder charges were pending in courts on June 30, just two cases shy of the number pending a year before. New felony filings in the state had climbed to 104,942 by the end of June, up from 101,354 a year ago.

Justice takes Courts in Brunswick County disposed of five murder cases in 2012. Some lingered in the system close to four years before their closure.District Attorney Jon David of the state's Judicial District 13 (presiding over Bladen, Columbus and Brunswick counties) inherited a number of pending murder cases that, he said, “were significantly old” when he was sworn into office in 2011.Although the reasons for delays vary with each case, David said, “It's important to remember that these cases are much more likely to go to trial than the average felony offense.”Trials demand preparation, which legal advocates agree takes time.“You cannot calendar a case for trial until all of the scientific testing is complete and discovery has been given to the defense,” David said. “In other words, there are dynamics at work with this category of cases that are going to make a swift disposition virtually impossible in the vast majority of murder cases, regardless of the jurisdiction.”David said their biggest hurdle to getting murder cases to trial, other than the backlog at the state crime lab, rests in scheduling conflicts among defense attorneys.“Sadly, our state does not have enough qualified attorneys who are desirous or capable of representing murder defendants,” David said. “One of the most precious commodities in the entire criminal justice system is a seasoned defense attorney who will zealously represent murder defendants who are indigent. This small group of attorneys is often stretched so thin running around among neighboring counties that they can easily convince a local judge of the need for a delay.”Public defender Paul Welch agrees. “There are a limited number of defense attorneys who are qualified to defend potentially capital cases,” he said, “and they are obliged to try their cases one at a time.”Prosecutors face a similar challenge, he said. But another factor fueling delays is “an increased level of preparation and training on both sides in an effort to avoid wrongful convictions,” Welch said. “The more carefully we investigate our cases, and the more skillfully we litigate them, the less likely we are to end up with a result which does not reflect the truth of the matter.”The extra care and attention, he said, may result in delays, “but in the long run it probably saves the judicial system time and money by reducing the need for post-conviction proceedings.”

Taxpayers foot the billThe long waits come at a price, not only for the victim's families or the potential justice of the accused, but also for the taxpayer.Henderson County taxpayers paid to detain Roumen Todorov Velkov for two-and-a-half years before his plea hearing. It was half of the sentence he received for pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of five people killed when his transfer truck plowed through stalled traffic on Interstate 26 in 2010.The average cost of housing an inmate in Henderson County is about $78.67 a day.In April, Melissa Amber Dalton was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing Richard Holden to death and seriously wounding Naomi Jean Barker in a home invasion on Aug. 21, 2009. Transylvania County taxpayers footed the bill for four years and eight months of her life sentence.Roy Franklyn Fisher was sentenced to a maximum of three years and five months in January when he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Randal Honeycutt, who died after a fight with Fisher at the Bonaire Motel. Fisher was given credit for the one year and eight months he spent in jail — on Henderson County's dime — waiting to be heard in the case. He is scheduled for release in October.Help to slay the beastly backlog is on the way, but until then courts have taken their own steps to ease the wait. The family of Vanessa Mintz waited with bated breath as Travis Lee McGraw appeared in court on May 19 to ask for a fourth continuance. Judge Tommy Davis denied the request.In the days that followed, McGraw's attorney asked for more postponements. Davis denied each one. Two weeks later, McGraw was sentenced to life in prison without parole — three years and four months after Mintz's murder.

Making the minutes countNewman has asked for more court time next year and has tried to make each minute count, moving cases at a quicker pace as he calls the docket, coordinating schedules with attorneys on both sides of the bar and joining his prosecutors in the fray.“We have six weeks of Superior Court jury trials available for the rest of the year,” Newman said before the most recent two-week term of Superior Court began July 14. “What we're doing now is figuring out what we want to prioritize and make sure we get addressed, and that's here in Henderson County. I have fewer weeks in Polk and Transylvania, and we have cases in all of those places.”Newman has asked for more Superior Court sessions in all of the counties in his district for next year to help get murder cases, vying for time amidst an onslaught of other felonies, through the system. He has been granted a couple of three-week sessions in Henderson County and additional weeks in Polk and Transylvania counties as well.As the population grows in North Carolina, so too does the demand for services, said Newman, appointed to the DA's post one year ago by Gov. Pat McCrory.“Our government agencies really have greater burdens placed on them through the increase in population that we see. And you know we all try to adjust and do the best that we can,” Newman said. “But we see that in terms of now I'm having to ask for more court time.”He says his office is up to the challenge.Reach Weaver at Emily.weaver@blueridgenow.com or 828-694-7867.

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